This is a rule to which there are very few exceptions.

When the examination is one in "religious knowledge," the burden of preparing for it falls wholly on the faculty of memory.
To appeal to the reasoning powers of the scholars might conceivably provoke them to ask inconvenient questions, and might even give rise to a spirit of rationalism in the school,--the spirit which "orthodoxy" has always regarded as the very antipole to religious faith.
But what of the child's emotional faculties?
Will not the beauty of the Gospel stories, will not the sublimity of the Old Testament poetry, make their own appeal to these?
They might do so if they were allowed to exert their spiritual magnetism.

But what chance have they?
The chilling shadow of the impending examination falls upon them and cancels their educative influence.

It is not because the Gospel stories are full of beauty and spiritual meaning that the child has to learn them, but because he will be questioned on them by the Diocesan Inspector.

It is not because certain passages from the Old Testament are poetry of a high order that the child commits them to memory, but because he may have to repeat them to the Diocesan Inspector.